Chapter fifty: A Prairie Home Companion

Hello everyone! Happy New Year's Eve. How are you? Anxious? Excited? That makes two of us. Tonight, I plan on eating my fair share of the charcuterie boards that my brother has talked about making. I doubt he's planning on sharing, but I'll work my way around it. In other news, we've officially made it to the last entry of 2020!

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This movie is about an actual radio show, A Prairie Home Companion, which ran under Garrison Keillor's direction from 1974 through 1987 and then under different hosts, but the concept remained the same. I've never listened to it myself but will have to see if I can find some clips at some point because it's interesting to know that it's real. In 2016, Chris Thile took the hosting position and renamed the show Live from Here, changing it entirely. It ran until June of this year. The movie itself debuted in 2006, so it's not like it foreshadows ten years into the future but, I assume that it's instead replicating some point in the '80s when there was supposed to be some significant shakeup, but Garrison Keillor was not yet retired from the show, since he plays himself in the movie. Phew! That was a lot of years I just went through. You'd think I was talking about book-keeping records for accounting!

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The plot is very much what you'd expect: An investigator (Kevin Kline) keeps watch over The Fitzgerald Theater during what is expected to be The Prairie Home Companion's final radio show using a plant (Virginia Madsen.) Meanwhile, the cast and crew (Meryl, Lily Tomlin, Garrison Keillor, Lindsey Lohan, Woody Harrelson, John C. Riley, and Maya Rudolph) prepare for the show, trying to act as though everything is normal.

The songs they sing throughout their performance are very mellow, relaxing, countryside songs that you can groove to, and what's interesting is that, in the traditional definition, there isn't a lot of dialogue. A lot of the film's messages and themes transcend through the lyrics of the music they sing.

In the end, the axeman (Tommy Lee Jones,) who has been brought in by the investigator, visits it one last time before its scheduled demolition. The cast and crew convince him to see the beauty in their music, and he decides not to tear the place down. It remains in business, and in 1987 it's under different hosts' directions until 2016.

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This film is very fun with lots of music, so that's a given that I like it. It's actually quite timely with the New Year because it's about finishing a chapter to start a new one, closing a door to open a window. In the process, it is not always what you would expect it to be, but you continue to live and learn for the better. Happy New Year from me to you. Here's to a new one!

As always, thank you for the entertainment, Meryl.